mediaite | Former President Bill Clinton appeared on the Today
show Monday for an interview about his upcoming novel, and he faced the
type of questioning that has become common practice in the aftermath of
the Me Too movement: a challenge of his treatment of Monica Lewinsky, the woman with which he had his infamous West Wing affair.
NBC News’s Craig Melvin kicked things off by asking
Clinton how he would have approached the accusations lobbed against him
if he were president in 2018, noting some have recently said he
should’ve resigned in the 1998.
“I don’t think it would be an issue because people would be using the
facts instead of the imagined facts,” Clinton said. “If the facts were
the same today, I wouldn’t [resign].”
“A lot of the facts have been conveniently omitted to make the story
work, I think partly because they are frustrated that they got all these
serious allegations against the current occupant of the Oval Office,
and his voters don’t seem to care,” Clinton said. “I think I did the
right thing, I defended the Constitution.”
“You think this president’s been given a pass, with regards to the
women who have come forward and accused him of sexual misconduct?”
Melvin asked.
“No. But it hasn’t gotten anything like the coverage you would expect,” Clinton said.
The former president continued that he likes the Me Too movement,
saying “it’s way overdue.” He added, “That doesn’t mean I agree with
everything.”
Melvin confronted Clinton with a line from the former White House intern’s op-ed in Vanity Fair in which she accused the president of taking advantage of her.
“Looking back on what happened then, through the lens of Me Too now,
do you think differently, or feel more responsibility?” Melvin pressed.
“No, I felt terrible then, and I came to grips with it,” Clinton said.
“Did you ever apologize to her?” Melvin asked.'
“Yes,” Clinton said. “And nobody believes that I got out of that for
free. I left the White House $16 million in debt. But you, typically,
have ignored gaping facts in describing this and I bet you don’t even
know them. This was litigated 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the American
people sided with me. They were not insensitive to that.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment